“Catch rates were down a bit from last year, but experienced crabbers were still able to get their daily limit of five crab,” Childers said. “The abundance of crab along the Pacific coast changes from year to year as a result of natural environmental factors, so it’s not surprising to see a change after a period of high abundance.”

A new round of telephone interviews with sport crabbers will tell shellfish managers more about the late-season crab fishery that got under way Nov. 1 in most areas of Puget Sound, Childers said. That survey, scheduled to begin the first week of January, will collect catch data from 6,000 of the nearly 200,000 fishers licensed to fish for Dungeness crab in Puget Sound this year.

“Phone interviews provide critical information for the management of the Puget Sound crab fishery,” Childers said. “We rely on sport crabbers contacted in the survey to provide an accurate account of their catch.”

Crabbers who complete the telephone interview will be eligible to win one of 10 free 2007 combination-fishing licenses available in a raffle, Childers said.

“The raffle is an incentive for crabbers who are interviewed to retrieve their catch cards and to report their fishing activities directly from their catch cards, rather than by memory,” said Childers, noting that WDFW recently announced 10 free-license winners from the last phone survey in September.

Other marine areas, where catch assessments indicated that area quotas had been taken during the summer season, have remained closed to crab fishing. Those areas include marine areas 7 (San Juan Islands), 8-1 (Deception Pass/Skagit Bay), 8-2 (Port Susan/Port Gardner) and 11 (Tacoma/Vashon Island).